


Partners

by axiumin



Category: EXO (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Awkward Flirting, F/M, Fluff, Gender-neutral Reader, M/M, Misunderstandings, Other, POV Second Person, Reader-Insert, Reader-Interactive
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-29
Updated: 2019-01-29
Packaged: 2019-10-18 18:09:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,403
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17585777
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/axiumin/pseuds/axiumin
Summary: This semester was going great until you got assigned a group project.





	Partners

**Author's Note:**

> Based on an anonymous request: "Can you do a Sehun College Au please???"
> 
> Cross-posted from tumblr. Come say hi @axiumin!

“At the beginning of the semester, I told you all that we’d have an exam as a final for this class. After some consideration, I’ve decided to have you do a group project instead.”

Your professor went on to explain the project, but you couldn’t hear her over the rush of blood through your ears. A _group project_? If you had to describe your initial emotional response was to this, it felt like you were being launched somewhere in the realm of abject panic.

This was far from the first time you’d been assigned a group project, so you weren’t naive enough to hope that work would be distributed evenly and everyone would work hard to do what needed to get done. Time and time again, you’d been left to shoulder the workload in many a group project gone south. It was truly a circle of hell in itself, and you already knew that the best possible outcome would be getting a partner who didn’t care if you took over.

Fortunately, it seemed as if you would have some small mercy this time around. When your professor announced the groups, you found out that you’d only have one partner: Sehun. Honestly, you’d never even heard Sehun’s voice before. All you knew was that he sat in the back of the class, wielded an impressive resting bitch face, and never participated in a single discussion throughout the semester as far as you could tell. If there was anyone who would easily let you take helm of this sinking ship, you were sure it would be him.

As soon as class was dismissed, you gathered your belongings and marched to the back of the classroom, where Sehun was still packing his notebook. You stopped right in front of him, and he looked up at you with wide eyes.

“I’m Y/N, your partner,” you said in a clipped, business-like tone. You handed him a piece of paper with your phone number and email scrawled on it. “Here’s my contact information. I was thinking we should meet up soon to decide the breakdown of the project. Have you been to that coffee shop in the business school? It’s out of the way a bit, but that just means it’s quiet. How do you feel about meeting there at eleven o’clock tomorrow?”

Sehun blinked, looking kind of dazed by your monologue of an introduction.

“Uh, sure.”

You nodded.

“Good. I’ll see you tomorrow, then.”

You arrived back to your dorm, feeling the weight of of your final grade for that class resting on your shoulders. The final project was rather straightforward: you’d be required to propose a lesson plan for teaching language skills to a group of preschool-aged students. That part would be easy enough. The trickier part came when you had to explicitly identify different theories of behavioral and cognitive science and explain how and why your lesson plan utilized these theories. Then, once everything was said and done, you’d have to present this lesson plan in front of the class. This is where you supposed having a competent partner would help.

As it was, you spent the rest of your afternoon drafting a lesson plan, complete with an efficient time-table and plenty of hands-on activities for the kiddos. It wasn’t a perfect lesson plan, but it was only the first draft, and you figured that as long as this was done for now, you could work on the theory-based portion of your project later. Maybe if you were lucky, Sehun would actually have an idea or two.

The next morning, you were squinting at your lesson plan again, trying to figure out what was missing, when Sehun shuffled into your peripheral vision. You looked up and saw him standing awkwardly next to your table, face unreadable. 

“Oh, good morning!” you greeted, hoping you didn’t sound as off-balance as you felt. You scooted your notebook and laptop closer to you, freeing up space at the table. “Come, sit down.”

He sat and stared at your set-up.

“I didn’t expect to see you working on it already,” he said, rifling through his backpack to produce his own laptop and notes. You hummed, watching as he got ready.

“Oh, yeah.” You shrugged awkwardly. “I try to stay on top of things, so I just decided to start drafting a lesson plan. I hope you don’t mind.”

It was Sehun’s turn to shrug.

“That’s fine. Can I see it?”

The next few minutes were silent as you both stared at your respective laptops. You guessed Sehun was probably familiarizing himself with the lesson plan while you were scrutinizing it, trying to figure out how you could make it better. It was a collaborative document, so you saw the moment Sehun’s cursor settled on the line of text you were reading. You watched in real time as he started making small revisions to the document, changing up your wording.

You looked up at him, but he was just focused on his laptop. Your eyebrow twitched in frustration. It’s not that they were _bad_ edits, per se, but it was the principle of the matter: this was _your_ draft, and he hadn’t even said anything before he went and started making it _his_ draft, too! What happened to this guy just sitting back and letting you take control of this project?

It was another few, tense minutes of staring at him before he finally leaned back away from his laptop and looked up at you, blinking in surprise when he found you already watching.

“What do you think?” you asked, trying your damnedest not to sound as bitter as you were feeling. You weren’t sure how successful you were from the way Sehun cleared his throat and fidgeted.

"I was looking at your timeframe for the activities, and I think we need to adjust it. You keep a very strict schedule, but if this is a hypothetical lesson plan for four-year-olds, we need to take into account the time it'll take to transition from activities and get them to settle down."

The frustration that had been simmering began to settle, replaced by thoughtfulness. Sehun actually had a point there. You’d been bothered, feeling like there was something off about your lesson plan. Was that it?

"I hadn't thought of that," you conceded. "But if we allow more time for transitions, we won't have time for all of the activities. Do you think we should take one of them out altogether then?"

“Well, two of the activities are kind of similar. Maybe we could change one so that the learning goals from the other are already integrated in it?” Sehun suggested. The two of you sat and discussed the merits of each activity, eventually deciding on which one to remove and how to adjust the others to still meet the requirements of your behaviorist approach.

Before you knew it, a couple of hours had passed, it was nearing time for your next lecture to begin, and the lesson plan had been polished up to something truly impressive. Sehun sat back in his chair and stretched a bit, his shirt riding up the tiniest bit to show a sliver of his tummy. You busied yourself by packing up your notebook just so you wouldn’t stare.

“I think we did great work today, Sehun,” you said, carefully saving said work on your laptop before beginning to pack that up, too. Sehun took the cue from you and started gathering his belongings as well.

“Yeah, we got a lot done. All we really have to do now is finish our theory write-up and get ready for the presentation.”

“Hmm, yeah. That shouldn’t take us more than a couple more days, if we’re as productive next time as we were today. Do you want to meet up here same time Thursday?”

Sehun nodded. “Sounds good to me. I’ll see you in class tomorrow, Y/N.”

With a wave, Sehun turned to leave, and you hesitated for only a moment before calling his name. 

“Sehun!” He stopped and turned to face you again, and you bit your lip. The past couple of hours had been really good, and you were honestly relieved to realize that you wouldn’t have to do all the work for this group project after all. You knew that you had been a bit rude with Sehun at first, so you wanted to apologize to him. "I’m sorry. I really underestimated you, Sehun,” you admitted.

Sehun shrugged, but he was smiling now, if shyly.

"Yeah, I figured. To be fair, it's not like I did a lot to let you know that I actually care about this class in the first place."

"Still, I know I won't be making this mistake again... partner." For a moment, you considered offering a handshake, but you thought that might take it too far. Sehun was already wrinkling his nose.

"That’s kind of cheesy, Y/N,” he teased. But he was still smiling, so you counted that as a win. “I’ll see you tomorrow.” With that, he turned to leave again, and you let him, still smiling as you watched him go. You were somehow looking forward to class more than usual.

The next morning, you were just settling into your usual seat in class when Sehun claimed the chair right next to you. You looked at him in surprise; up until this day, he’d always sat in the back of the room. Sehun just greeted you with a nod and a quiet ‘good morning’ before taking out his notebook.

Sehun didn’t speak at all through the lecture, same as usual. But now that you were this close to him, you could see the neat rows of notes he took, a combination of the lecture’s main points and his own ideas. Before, you had assumed he didn’t care about the class just because he sat in the back and didn’t speak. Now, however, you were beginning to realize that just because a fellow student didn’t seem as engaged as you didn’t mean that they weren’t still actively learning. Somehow, you felt a bit embarrassed to have taken so long to realize that even though you studied education. You felt even more chagrined when you thought about how dismissive you’d been of Sehun.

For his part, Sehun seemed rather unbothered by your crisis, even though you knew you’d never been good at hiding your emotions. He just worked diligently on his notes during class and left with a small smile and a quick “See you tomorrow, Y/N” while you were still trying to figure out why you were so hung up on your realization that Sehun was actually hardworking.

When his smile made your heart skip a beat, you had to wonder if maybe you would have cared less about this if he hadn’t been so handsome.

You left class that day pondering your strange fixation on what you’d dubbed ‘The Sehun Problem’, and you were still pondering this the next day when you met Sehun in the coffee shop again.

This time, he was already sitting at a table by the time you got there, and you had to check your watch to make sure you hadn’t somehow gotten there late. You hadn’t; he was just early. When he saw you approaching the table, he perked up, pulling his headphones out of his ears and offering another shy smile.

“Hey, partner,” he greeted. Somehow, as shy as he looked, you got the feeling he was teasing you about your comment from the other day. You let it pass without remark, though, just settling in across from him and pulling out your laptop so you could get to work.

The two of you settled into an easy rhythm together, each tackling different parts of the theory write-up before trading off to double check each other’s work. It was steadying, being able to work with someone who you could trust to do their best. Instead of the stress of working on a big project by yourself, you were able to actually enjoy the comfortable back-and-forth.

By the looks of it, Sehun was enjoying himself, too. It apparently didn’t take much to dispel whatever shyness Sehun had felt. Quiet conversation soon turned into energetic chatter, and somehow the coffee shop around you seemed alive with your laughter on this otherwise quiet Thursday.

With no small amount of reluctance, you had to admit that your work on this project was coming to a close. You and Sehun had done some great work with the lesson plan and theory write-up, and there were only so many times a person could proofread their work before they had to give it up. All that was left was for you and Sehun to present your lesson plan to the class on Monday, but considering how well both of you understood your work, you couldn’t imagine there would be any difficulty with that. The project was essentially done, and you had just run out of reasons to spend time with Sehun like this.

“Well, this is it,” you announced finally, unable to drag it out any longer. “We did it.”

“We sure did. I think we’re going to get an A for sure,” Sehun said.

For a long moment, neither of you made any move to pack up. You just stared at Sehun, trying to soak in the moment, and Sehun just stared right back at you with a considering look. At length, he broke the silence.

“So, do you want to meet here on Tuesday? Same time?” Sehun asked. You frowned in confusion.

“But we’re presenting on Monday. We don’t have anything to work on anymore.”

“I know.” Sehun shrugged. “We don’t have to work on anything to spend time together. I think we both know now that we work pretty well together, so why not see how we work together in other ways?”

Your confusion was beginning to lift, and a smile was slowly growing on your lips. Sehun noticed this and was bolstered.

“So what do you say?” he offered, smile turning a bit cheeky. “Partners?” He held out a hand.

You looked between his face— sweet and smiling— and his hand before putting your hand in his. Instead of shaking it, he pulled your hand up to brush his lips against your knuckles.

“Yeah,” you replied, your smile mirroring his own. “Partners.”


End file.
